The present disclosure relates generally to suggestive text auto-completion and, more particularly, to supplying text auto-completion suggestions to a user of a text entry application.
It is known to provide an auto-completion or type-ahead function to assist a user in text entry. This is used, for example, in a computing environment in which a user enters text in to a text entry field of a document viewed on a display, using a text entry device such as a keyboard. An autocomplete or type-ahead function is provided by presenting on the display one or more suggested completions to text already entered by the user. The suggested completions are provided by matching text, usually text having the same initial letters as entered by the user, by using a dictionary of words or phrases. Various advances on this basic pattern have been suggested.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,685,144 describes techniques for automatically generating and maintaining personal data, such as an address book, a financial portfolio, a discussion groups or blogs book, or other types of personal data stores, based on a person's structured search data and/or usage data (e.g., browsing) and/or other sources of personal data (e.g., emails the user receives). Related metadata can also be used in the generating and/or maintaining of the personal data. Dynamic personal data ranking and/or autocomplete functions are also provided, which can be used in conjunction with the automatic generation and maintenance of the user's personal data, to further ease the user's burden in managing and/or handling such data.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,359,532 describes methods and arrangements of text entry. Embodiments include transformations, code, state machines or other logic to index segments of text from multiple sources and receive segments of text being entered into text-entry applications in a floating application. The embodiments may also involve matching the segments of text to indexed segments of text and entering completions of the received segments of text into the text-entry applications. The completions may be based upon the matching, and the completion of a segment may be entered into the text-entry application from which it was received.